Exclude a folder from Time Machine from Terminal — via SS64

Commandlow riskmacOS 14 Sonoma and later

Big caches, virtual machines and downloads folders can bloat your backups. tmutil can mark a folder so Time Machine skips it, and the exclusion travels with the folder even if you move it.

Takes effect right away

The easy way

  1. Run the command with the folder you want to skip.
  2. Check it with tmutil isexcluded ~/Downloads.
  3. The click way: System Settings > General > Time Machine > Options and add the folder to the exclude list.

Command

Run in Terminal (Applications › Utilities).

tmutil addexclusion ~/Downloads

Undo

tmutil removeexclusion ~/Downloads
Excluded folders aren't backed up at all, so don't exclude anything you can't re-download or recreate.

Sources

Source reviewed
2026-11-02
Link checked
2026-11-02
Tested hands-on
Not by Oddbyte.Me

Oddbyte.Me hasn't tried this on every macOS version, so keep the undo handy.

time machinetmutilexcludebackupdisk space

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